


Waking

by Vgwd



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 15:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/775723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vgwd/pseuds/Vgwd





	Waking

The woman wakes slowly. It's hot and humid and she's already sweaty before she opens her eyes. Her room is dark and stultifying. There is no air conditioning, just a lazy fan that moves the air around like a spoon in soup. Not really improving the atmosphere. She knows that she should wake quickly, she should be up and out of bed and aware but years of late nights and languid mornings have left her dozy as a hibernating sloth. She is not a morning person and she needs time to come round. It's not even light yet, just the strange half dawn and she doesn't know what has woken her. She finally opens her eyes and knows why. There is a man sitting in the rattan chair by the window. The window which is still locked. He must have come in through the door. She should have heard him crossing the room, passing her bed. It's not a big room. But she didn't. And it is not the man she expected to see.   
She's been on the run for a long time now. Moving house and country frequently, changing name and hair colour. Doing everything that she can to change her appearance without resorting to surgery. She is still vain about the looks she was born with. The man sitting in her chair is still, silent and apparently unaware of the heat. He is checking his mobile phone and the screen illuminates his face. For a moment she had thought (hoped) it was Sherlock. The thought had made her pulse flutter. But Sherlock is dead. She saw the obituary and the photographs of his grave. It's the other one. The older brother. Mycroft makes her heart race for an entirely different reason. Well, maybe not an entirely different reason. Both men are self contained in a way she is not used to. Men reveal their true selves to her. Most men, but not the Holmes'.   
She's afraid to move, she doesn't think that he has noticed that she is awake. If he has, he's not letting her know. She's not used to being afraid. She's known an abstract notion of fear; an anxiety when she's been cornered but she's not felt the visceral, sickening fear she's feeling now. She had thought she was safe. She is technically dead. Everyone thinks she is dead. Sherlock saw to that. He gave her the chance to run and be reborn. No one knows she is alive but Mycroft is here and she doesn't know why. She replays all of her past crimes in her head. All of the misdemeanours that she thought she'd got away with but for which she is finally being held accountable. Blackmail. So much blackmail. Two cabinet ministers, an opposition front bencher, the Royal Family. Mycroft himself. She had brought the government to its knees and Mycroft Holmes had accepted it as part of the game he plays. But she knows why he is here. She embarrassed him. She brought Sherlock into it. Flamboyant, easily bored, show off Sherlock who broke a code to prove himself to her. A code that ruined Mycroft's plans. She embarrassed the Holmes boys and forced Mycroft to compromise to save his little brother. The brother who had saved her life, the more-bang-for-your-buck brother whose feelings for her (his pupils had dilated as well as hers) had given her a level of protection. Mycroft would never actively hurt his little brother. But Sherlock is dead, beautiful Sherlock with his cheekbones and his grasshopper mind. Sherlock who is basically a child in a grown ups body. Playing at being an adult. Mycroft, still silent in the corner of her room, is an adult. A predator in a civil servant's body. Mycroft is a monster who is playing at being human. The only thing that kept the monster away fom her jumped off a building. And now the monster is in her room.   
She needs to go to the toilet, her leg is itching. She wants to move but she doesn't want him to know she's awake. Part of her hopes that if she's quiet enough he'll get bored and go away.   
Maybe she should sit up and ask what he wants. Maybe there is something she can offer him to make him go away. Can she buy him off somehow. There must be something he wants. She just hopes it isn't a rug made out of her skin. She doesn't think she's going to be arrested. There would be police, soldiers, anonymous men manhandling her out of the building. Mycroft doesn't get his hands dirty with trivia. So he's probably here unofficially. It's a personal visit. Which is bad. Arrests mean questions, lawyers, opportunities to do deals, to talk your way out of trouble. Sometimes the chance to run away when they move you from cell to cell. She doubts she could talk, run or fuck her way out of trouble with Mycroft. Should she even try? Perhaps offer her condolences. He has just lost his only brother. The realisation that she is in over her head hits her and makes her stomach lurch. She must have made a noise because he looks up from his mobile. He shifts and the chair creaks as he finally speaks.  
"Oh good. You're awake"


End file.
